


outside

by cocotte (chartreuser)



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M, Short One Shot, just a short snippet of nicky being in love ok, this is just. feelings. lots of feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-17
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-11-15 06:46:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11225511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chartreuser/pseuds/cocotte
Summary: “Why?” Nicke repeats, his whole body leaning on the railing, staring back at Marcus—who’s waiting for a casual answer to his casual question.





	outside

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tiptoe39](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiptoe39/gifts).



> just a little something i wrote for octotippy and i wanted to save it somewhere but i didn't want to save it in my google docs so maybe this will become a series of little snippets i don;t really know just look at me i'm dying of my mountains of wips i have so many nickyovi fic to write i'm going to turn into a monster rah rah

“Why?” Nicke repeats, his whole body leaning on the railing, staring back at Marcus—who’s waiting for a casual answer to his casual question. It’d be over and done with if only Nicke would smile sideways and raise his eyebrows to where Ovi’s yelling goofy, badly thought-out insults to the rest of his Russians, but Nicke just can’t shrug it off and give his put-upon act, not when the answer is the casual one he wants to give. 

“It seems obvious,” Marcus says, “But it never really felt like something…” 

“I know,” says Nicke, waving back a little too slowly when Ovi blows a kiss to their direction as dramatically as he could, with Dima trying to slash him half-heartedly at his legs. The whole thing is routine. The rest of the team idles around them, smiles firmly stuck into place at the knowledge that there’s nothing pressing for now, that for once the expectations could be lifted off. The whole complex isn’t empty, but it seems that way, their shouts expanding and getting more childlike, louder, as if most of them aren’t well into their twenties and objectively, should know better. Subjectively, Nicke hasn’t had the chance to turn off his brain in a long while and  _ look _ , to look without his brain running in a loop figure eights in the background, and he could deny it, but he’s starting to get too old to deny how much he loves just looking at Alex, to see him and not wonder at where he’s going, or how he’s going to move next. 

“I never thought I’d love him so much,” says Nicke, and he might as well not have said it at all, with Marcus silent and still beside him. Maybe he hadn’t heard. It’s likely; there are more of their teammates joining Alex now, piling into a distracted circle onto the ice. He’s tugging on Schmidty’s shirt, swaying from side to side as everyone’s tugged along in a weird mesh that Nicke can’t quite figure out. “It’s.” 

“What,” Marcus asks. Nicke feels like he’s just been caught in the centre of a photograph, the whole paper-weight of attention fixed on him, when he’s done nothing to warrant it.  

“I like it,” Nicke tells him. It almost pains him to get the words out, how uncomfortable the admission is, but it’s the truth, and Marcus has been his friend for a long time. “I’m glad I’m in love with him.” 

 

 

Later, Alex manages to drag Nicke onto the ice too, his fingers wrapped around his wrist like a gentle initiation, like a particularly deceiving one. Alex isn’t shy about using his entire strength on Nicke—at their house, in the locker room, on the bus. Everybody’s winding down slowly; the girlfriends returned to their sides and the children held as they stumble their way around. Nicke wonders about it, if this feeling could swell up any further, how different it’d be if Alex didn’t know how to skate after all, that Nicke would have to watch him step into a part of his life he wasn’t in before, actively welcoming him, letting him barge into the spaces he wants.  

“What are you thinking about?” Alex asks, leaning in close, the shortest distance away. In his dress shirt and trousers, Alex almost doesn’t look like himself, the harshness in his profile dissipated by the smile on his face. Alex is the type of person that’s never really out of his element, but here he looks starkly different. Calmer somehow. It makes him want to bottle up this calmness, to know that there is something beyond the rink, that there’s something to hoard, at least. 

 “You,” Nicke says. “I was thinking about you.”

 

 


End file.
